"The USS Intrepid is an Essex Class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy (USN). She is currently berthed in New York and serves as a museum, but had an operational life in the USN spanning over 20 years...." This model depicts "...the USS Intrepid as she appeared in February 1945, immediately after her second major refit. It has "a scale of 1 in 40 making the final model 6.8m or 23ft."

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This aircraft carrier was on display at the Great Western LEGO Show a couple of weeks back - it's a model of the USS Intrepid built by Ed Diment with help from Annie Diment and Ralph Savelsberg. It weights a quarter of a ton and contains 250,000 pieces.....

The real ship was about 266 m long, which at a scale of 1/40 means the model is about 830 studs. It's bigger than the Harry S. Truman built by Malle Hawking (even though that is also intended for minifigs and a real Nimitz class carrier is considerably longer than an Essex class carrier such as Intrepid), or the fantastic Yamato by JunLego.

Ed started it about 9 months ago, after taking apart his model of HMS Hood. I was one of the people who tried to convince him to build an aircraft carrier rather than yet another battleship and in return he asked me to design the aircraft to go on it. He built the ship together with his wife Annie. She also built most of the planes using instructions I made. I posted several topics here on eurobricks about the aircraft while I was working on them and you can download instructions for some of them.

The ship looks great in the pictures, but they still don't quite do it justice. We hadn't seen the whole thing together, with all the planes and guns until we finished setting it up at the Great Western LEGO Show and we were pretty much gobsmacked by it. I've spent much of my weekend walking circles around it and answering hundreds of questions by the public, all with a big happy grin on my face I'm sure.

I can also tell you it's a heavy piece of kit. It is modular so that it can be moved in a van. I loaded it with Ed on Friday morning before the show and unloaded it together with him on Sunday evening after we got back. Fortunately at the event itself there were a lot of people who helped us out with the heavy lifting. Both of us were absolutely knackered afterwards.

I still intend to write a blog post about the thing and the event on my own blog, but have been insanely busy at work since I came back from the UK.

The real ship was about 266 m long, which at a scale of 1/40 means the model is about 830 studs. It's bigger than the Harry S. Truman built by Malle Hawking (even though that is also intended for minifigs and a real Nimitz class carrier is considerably longer than an Essex class carrier such as Intrepid), or the fantastic Yamato by JunLego.

Ed started it about 9 months ago, after taking apart his model of HMS Hood. I was one of the people who tried to convince him to build an aircraft carrier rather than yet another battleship and in return he asked me to design the aircraft to go on it. He built the ship together with his wife Annie. She also built most of the planes using instructions I made. I posted several topics here on eurobricks about the aircraft while I was working on them and you can download instructions for some of them.

The ship looks great in the pictures, but they still don't quite do it justice. We hadn't seen the whole thing together, with all the planes and guns until we finished setting it up at the Great Western LEGO Show and we were pretty much gobsmacked by it. I've spent much of my weekend walking circles around it and answering hundreds of questions by the public, all with a big happy grin on my face I'm sure.

I can also tell you it's a heavy piece of kit. It is modular so that it can be moved in a van. I loaded it with Ed on Friday morning before the show and unloaded it together with him on Sunday evening after we got back. Fortunately at the event itself there were a lot of people who helped us out with the heavy lifting. Both of us were absolutely knackered afterwards.

I still intend to write a blog post about the thing and the event on my own blog, but have been insanely busy at work since I came back from the UK.

Cheers,

Ralph

Hi Ralph,

the ship looks amazing and so do the aircrafts. As you may know I have been building on a MOC of the HMS Victory in scale 1:39 for about 4.5 years now.

Other ship builders like Captain Green Hair have adopted a similar scale for large ship building. When I started out 4.5 years ago I did not have a collection to speak off, so I had to buy all bricks I am using for the ship online and in Lego-stores, slowing my progress.

My current half a year long building delay however, is mainly caused by writing up papers and my PhD thesis.

We had a discussion on scale in another topic, related to car sizes. Since the aircraft carrier is 1:40, do you think 1:40 is a good scale for large scale models?

For me it was trial and error to get to 1:39, roughly one foot a stud and mini-figs still look well proportioned compared to the interior spaces.

When interpreting detailed plans of the ship the rounding off seems to be very Lego friendly at about 1:39/1:40 as well.

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Thanks for the inside infos and the background story Ralph. Really nice.

This ship is more than impressive. I take my hat off to Ed Diment and his wife, honestly. (...and to you Ralph, you contributed too. )

We've done other collaborative projects in the past, back when I still was living in the UK. Now that I'm back in the Netherlands collaborative projects require a different way of working. He'd seen my FM1 Hellcat and liked it, so when we started discussing him building an aircraft carrier, I suppose it seemed natural that I'd design the planes and make instructions for them. I was happy to be able to contribute to this project.

Wow! Stunning, absolutely stunning! I've been thinking about air craft carriers, but not in minifig scale!

It takes a special kind of crazy to do that. I didn't build the ship, obviously, but the five different designs were already a lot of work. The 42 aircraft built for this required about 30,000 parts alone.

Hi Ralph,

the ship looks amazing and so do the aircrafts. As you may know I have been building on a MOC of the HMS Victory in scale 1:39 for about 4.5 years now.

Other ship builders like Captain Green Hair have adopted a similar scale for large ship building. When I started out 4.5 years ago I did not have a collection to speak off, so I had to buy all bricks I am using for the ship online and in Lego-stores, slowing my progress.

My current half a year long building delay however, is mainly caused by writing up papers and my PhD thesis.

We had a discussion on scale in another topic, related to car sizes. Since the aircraft carrier is 1:40, do you think 1:40 is a good scale for large scale models?

For me it was trial and error to get to 1:39, roughly one foot a stud and mini-figs still look well proportioned compared to the interior spaces.

When interpreting detailed plans of the ship the rounding off seems to be very Lego friendly at about 1:39/1:40 as well.

Do you have any ideas/comments on this.

Kind regards,

Taddy

Hi Teddy. I indeed know about HMS Victory. I also know how writing PhD thesis can interfere with hobbies. I've been there. I started a new job as an assistant professor about five months ago and also have virtually no time left to do any building.

I normally build my my models for minifigs slightly smaller. Most of my city stuff is 1/45 and the few 'minifig scale' planes I built that weren't for this project are about 1/43. Ed's main reasons for choosing 1/40 are that the Yamato built by JunLego is 1/40 as well and people back in the 'forties were smaller than they are now, on average .

For my aircraft it worked out quite well. The difference between 1/40 and 1/43 might not seem like much, but space inside for a figure in these planes really is at a premium and being able to make a canopy one plate taller or half a brick wider really helped with some of them. I have a collection that is large enough to build some pretty big things, but I couldn't work on the same project for months at a time without going potty, so I don't build big ships. Most of the big things that I've done are also really collections of multiple smaller MOCs built as separate projects. A scale of 1/40 seems very reasonable.

I was hoping Teddy would chime in!

Aren't you also doing the inside of the ship to scale (hallways, rooms, storage, etc)?

The inside of the ship is mostly filled with a techic beam structure to give the modules that the hull consists of sufficient strength to be able to lift them relatively easily. That doesn't leave much room for a detailed interior. It does have a fully-built hangar deck under the flight deck, however.

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The inside of the ship is mostly filled with a techic beam structure to give the modules that the hull consists of sufficient strength to be able to lift them relatively easily. That doesn't leave much room for a detailed interior. It does have a fully-built hangar deck under the flight deck, however.

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Sorry Ralph, I should have been more specific. That question was for Teddy!

I'm sorry. I didn't realise that.

It's 7 m 10 cm long ! Very impressive .

Somebody on gizmodo remarked that 1/40 isn't even a particularly large scale. He's right in a sense. A 1/40 car model isn't much larger than most Matchbox type toy cars. However, if you buy model kits of aircraft carriers, they tend to be scaled 1/700 or 1/350, for an obvious reason!

I don't fancy making 1/350 scale LEGO aircraft though

Cheers,

Ralph

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Hi Teddy. I indeed know about HMS Victory. I also know how writing PhD thesis can interfere with hobbies. I've been there. I started a new job as an assistant professor about five months ago and also have virtually no time left to do any building.

I normally build my my models for minifigs slightly smaller. Most of my city stuff is 1/45 and the few 'minifig scale' planes I built that weren't for this project are about 1/43. Ed's main reasons for choosing 1/40 are that the Yamato built by JunLego is 1/40 as well and people back in the 'forties were smaller than they are now, on average .

For my aircraft it worked out quite well. The difference between 1/40 and 1/43 might not seem like much, but space inside for a figure in these planes really is at a premium and being able to make a canopy one plate taller or half a brick wider really helped with some of them. I have a collection that is large enough to build some pretty big things, but I couldn't work on the same project for months at a time without going potty, so I don't build big ships. Most of the big things that I've done are also really collections of multiple smaller MOCs built as separate projects. A scale of 1/40 seems very reasonable.

Cheers,

Ralph

Hi Ralph,

thank you for your reply! I can imagine starting as a new assistant professor can be very time consuming. Hopefully, you will have some more spare time for building in the future.

The average hight argumentation seems very reasonable to use for the aircraft carrier. It is one I have used in the past explaining the height of a mini-fig at 1:40 when showing my WIP HMS Victory to visiting friends. Currently, I am doing a small side-project of a BR 01 steam locomotive. Personally, I find scaling there is a bit difficult. The new big and old smaller train wheel sizes suggest a scale close to 1:60 - 1:55, but the train track gauge is more like 1:40. So I have been fiddling around with some sort of a hybrid scale. Morphing the train differently in different directions or mis-scaling several parts on purpose. So far I have not been able to find a satisfying compromise. I either end up with an in-my-eyes weirdly morphed locomotive, a small locomotive, or a locomotive with comparatively small wheels. Currently I have settled with 1:55 for the train wheel base and have ordered some new bricks for the top,of which the width will be closer to 1:45 and the length to 1:50. Do you have any ideas/experience on using different scaling in a vehicle?

Kind regards,

Teddy

I was hoping Teddy would chime in!

Aren't you also doing the inside of the ship to scale (hallways, rooms, storage, etc)?

Hi Edmond,

Thanks for your reply. I don't want to hijack the topic of this magnificent ship, but I will give a short off topic reply.

yep, next to building the complete interior I am building the entire hull as well, which makes it more time consuming to build the ship.

Two years ago me and my girlfriend visited the HMS Victory so we could take photos of the interior.

Yes, We spend a holiday in Great-Brittan of which visiting the HMS Victory was one of the main reasons to go.

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thank you for your reply! I can imagine starting as a new assistant professor can be very time consuming. Hopefully, you will have some more spare time for building in the future.

The average hight argumentation seems very reasonable to use for the aircraft carrier. It is one I have used in the past explaining the height of a mini-fig at 1:40 when showing my WIP HMS Victory to visiting friends. Currently, I am doing a small side-project of a BR 01 steam locomotive. Personally, I find scaling there is a bit difficult. The new big and old smaller train wheel sizes suggest a scale close to 1:60 - 1:55, but the train track gauge is more like 1:40. So I have been fiddling around with some sort of a hybrid scale. Morphing the train differently in different directions or mis-scaling several parts on purpose. So far I have not been able to find a satisfying compromise. I either end up with an in-my-eyes weirdly morphed locomotive, a small locomotive, or a locomotive with comparatively small wheels. Currently I have settled with 1:55 for the train wheel base and have ordered some new bricks for the top,of which the width will be closer to 1:45 and the length to 1:50. Do you have any ideas/experience on using different scaling in a vehicle?

Kind regards,

Teddy

Hi Teddy,

I have built a lot of vehicles intended for minifigs. I settled on 1/45 for those a few years ago. It's a scale that is pretty close to most of the vehicles in LEGO's city sets, which means that in a collaborative display my vehicles and the sets look OK side-by-side. Trains are not really my thing. I have built one train in the last 20 years. Since it's a modern train the wheels are hardly visible and I didn't take the wheel diameter into account when choosing the scale. I chose 1/45 for that as well. The carriages ended up being 8 studs wide and roughly 60 studs long. I have no intention of running it on a track or through corners, so that length isn't a problem. I know train builders often selectively compress their models, in length in particular, but I have no experience doing that myself.